It’s no secret that different regions of the world often receive wildly different box art and covers for media, most notably, video games. The difference in box art can vary between regions — for instance, the floating heads of a game’s important characters plastered all over a cover in one region, versus a simple symbol on a plain background in another. The most amusing differences in regional box art tend to take place with Nintendo’s pink puffball Kirby — not because the entire art is changed, but because almost everything is the same except for Kirby’s expression.

In the East, Kirby is a cute, puffy, expressionless blob; in the West, the usual major difference is he suddenly has angry eyebrows. Video game fans of either culture tend to point to this slight change as indicative of the entire two markets — and they’re not entirely wrong.

America on the left, Japan on the right.

Nintendo has never really addressed the Kirby change previously, even when fans directly and aggressively poke fun at it. The trope for American media is that of aggression (violence, anti-heroes, and so on), and the trope for Japanese media is brightly colored, extreme cuteness. There are, of course, various outliers, but it’s not difficult to notice that mainstream Japan popularizes things like adorable Pokémon, whereas mainstream America spent six seasons rooting for a murderous, manipulative meth cook on Breaking Bad. Now, however, Nintendo has directly addressed the change in Kirby’s demeanor, and yeah, it’s exactly why you think.

The director of the recently released Kirby: Triple Deluxe, Shinya Kumazaki, explained the difference in box art between regions. In Japan, the team is involved in the entire process, including selecting box art. The folks at HAL feel the cute Kirby has the widest appeal, and thus, is the more powerful image. However, the guys understand that the “serious side” of Kirby has an appeal in the West, and want to appeal to that audience. So, changing Japanese Kirby’s (creepily lifeless) eyes to show American angry eyebrows of determination isn’t something the team is against or that has been changed against their will when brought stateside. Instead, it’s simply because cultures value different things. Who would’ve thought?